Aliens : Colonial Marines - FPS ( They're back ! )

My thoughts on the game (not finished it yet but thought I'd offer my 2cents)

Massive Aliens fan (all the films all the AVP games since 1993 one on Atari Jaguar), they've included details from the film nicely, it's good to hear Hicks' voice and Bishop too and the maps have some nostalgic effect at times.

But as a game, this is not just joining the majority, it is completely awful.

The gfx are extremely average, the mechanics aren't great (typical, generic nothing exciting or original), the storyline is just as average (despite a very few nice inclusions for fans of the films) not only that but more of this modern day Rank Up, Master master sergeant shooter person nonesense.

So far I honestly feel that they tried their best to make a generic, boring, repetitive game - ZERO effort put in yet they get millions of pounds revenue for it.

Not good enough but doesn't surprise me these days, in the slightest....


No flaming please, just MY opinion
 
Are sega/gearbox known for patching their games and long term support in general or a basic release maybe 1 patch and thats it? Chances of mod tools or fan made mod tools so fans can fix the textures themselves if needed etc?
 
its that bad there is no chance of saving it !

honestly its that bad.

i love aliens franchise from films to games i loved the last one (avp 2010)and some panned that well if you didnt like that then this is 100x worse.
 
Duno if its been posted yet in here but its a interesting read from a supposed developer talking about the games development on reddit.

http://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=244911

First off, due to me breaking NDA, I can't provide any proof that I'm not just talking out of my ass. But I figure you'd be interested in hearing what I have to say regardless. I've been on the project for around a year and a half, so some of the following are things I've heard from more senior guys.

Pecan (the internal codename for ACM) has a pretty long history. SEGA, GBX and 20th Century FOX came to an agreement to produce an Aliens game around 6 years ago, after which SEGA almost immediately announced it, long before Pecan had even started production. The game has been in active development in the past, only to be shelved in favor of another project (Borderlands, Duke, etc), and each time it was resumed it would undergo a major content overhaul.

SEGA, naturally, wasn't super pleased about the delays, but GBX got away with it for a long time and the contract between SEGA and GBX kept getting augmented to push the projected release further and further back. The last time it was resumed, GBX outsourced a good portion of the game to outside companies. Initially, the plan was for TimeGate to take the majority of campaign, GBX would take MP, Demiurge and Nerve would handle DLC and various other focused tasks. This decision was made mostly so that most of the developers at GBX could continue working on Borderlands 2, while a small group of LDs, coders and designers dealt with Pecan.

Somehow the schedules for Pecan and Borderlands 2 managed to line up and GBX realized that there was no ******* way they could cert and ship two titles at the same time. Additionally, campaign (which was being developed by TimeGate) was extremely far behind, even as Pecan's Beta deadline got closer and closer. In April or May (can't remember which), Pecan was supposed to hit beta, but GBX instead came to an agreement with SEGA that they would push the release date back one more time, buying GBX around 9 mos extension.

About 5 of those 9 months went to shipping BL2. In that time, TimeGate managed to scrap together 85% of the campaign, but once Borderlands 2 shipped and GBX turned its attention to Pecan, it became pretty apparent that what had been made was in a pretty horrid state. Campaign didn't make much sense, the boss fights weren't implemented, PS3 was way over memory, etcetcetc. GBX was pretty unhappy with TG's work, and some of Campaign maps were just completely redesigned from scratch. There were some last minute feature requests, most notably female marines, and the general consensus among GBX devs was that there was no way this game was going to be good by ship. There just wasn't enough time.

Considering that SEGA was pretty close to taking legal action against GBX, asking for an extension wasn't an option, and so Pecan crash-landed through certification and shipping. Features that were planned were oversimplified, or shoved in (a good example of this are challenges, which are in an incredibly illogical order). Issues that didn't cause 100% blockers were generally ignored, with the exception of absolutely horrible problems. This isn't because GBX didn't care, mind you. At a certain point, they couldn't risk changing ANYTHING that might cause them to fail certification or break some other system. And so, the product you see is what you get.

Beyond gameplay, the story has been raised as an issue several times. I can't really comment without feeling bad beyond saying that the script was approved by 20th Century FOX, and that the rush to throw a playable product together came at the cost of the story. Campaign does a pretty bad job of explaining a lot of the questions raised at the start of the game, and so hopefully there will be DLC to flesh that out a bit better.
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There were some last minute feature requests, most notably female marines
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I knew it! You gotta have a hard-ass female marine guys! And she has to be hispanic! Company regulations 44-ca-5: all marine platoons must have a synthetic and someone exactly like Vasquez. And she has to be the one with the big mini-gun.
 
voorhees1979 said:
Yeah Dead Space 3 is a good little game to, trouble is half the people who say bad stuff have not even played either game. They just jump on said band wagon, don't get me wrong I am not saying Aliens is amazing it does have stuff that should have been better. But overall the campaign is pretty decent and it looks nice to.
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any credibility you may have had has been thrown out the window :D

But seriously, it looks nice? You defending your rubbish purchase or something.
 
majnu said:
any credibility you may have had has been thrown out the window :D

But seriously, it looks nice? You defending your rubbish purchase or something.
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hehe, no I have got some right stinkers in my collection and i don't defend those :) I really don't think it looks to bad, I was playing it last night in the dark with headphones on and I quite enjoyed it. I mean if you have tried it for an hour or two and say yeah it's rubbish then cool, that's your view. But really it looks alright.
 
Just played an hour of single player and there are some appalling textures, i am looking a lot to collect dog tags etc
Some tools lying about that are modeled in 3d then you see others that are flat textures on the ground! Theres some low res blocks on the floor which i can't even make out what they are, also i saw a black square what looked like an open vent on the wall at crouch level, shined my torch on it expecting to see inside but no its just a black square flat texture!
As seems to be explained in the last few posts it looks like it was rushed as is very sloppy. Companies that do this realy should have action taken against them.
SEGA use to have quality control!
 
Sums it up imo:

The marriage of a first-person shooter and the Alien franchise should be a perfect fit, especially from Gearbox, a team rooted in the genre. And yet, the pairing eludes a happy ending once again. Aliens: Colonial Marines isn't disappointing because it couldn't live up to lofty expectations, it's disappointing because it turned out to be such an unfettered disaster.
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Should start up a kickstarter campaign to make a proper aliens game, problem there is fox would be all over us with law suits! I'm pretty sure even I could have done a better job and I know zip about game development.
 
it is about profits and that is all. witcher its that bad i played it for one hr and uninstalled and will give to my lad to play if hes ever that bored :p

i thought duke nukem took some beating as worst game i have played in last ten years but.. i think this may of just beaten it :D
 
This should have been a success. The IP is already well established. We have the technology now to create a truly remarkable Aliens game with insane graphics. The original Aliens movie should have provided all they needed to flesh out an interesting story to continue the adventure. Nothing overly clever as far as the plot is concerned... just something believable that makes sense. For example:

The "Company" dispatches a joint Weyland Yutani / USMC task force to LV426 to investigate what happened. They find the colony and atmosphere processor in ruins, no survivors but the alien ship is still there and there's still plenty to explore. That would take up, what, 15% of the game? Enough for fans to feel nostalgic and get the chance to relive some familiar moments we have become so fond of in the original film. Any longer and it might feel a bit samey and “ok, we get it, let’s move on”.

Then there is the bioweapons division who could turn up at some point to mix things up a bit, perhaps a group of mercenaries who have been hired to retrieve alien specimens for them. Hell, they could have had part of the game based on tracking, finding and boarding the Sulaco if they really wanted to…

What about the numerous novels based on the Aliens franchise for inspiration?

A wasted opportunity… There really is no excuse.
 
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